Echoes from the shock wave that destroyed part of the town of West, Texas, last April ricocheted through a community gym and county meeting room in Houston late this week as visiting federal officials heard advice on making communities and workplaces safer.

"We can't allow ourselves to forget that this stems from one of the worst tragedies in American history," Jordan Barab, deputy assistant secretary of labor for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, said as he opened a public listening session Friday in north Houston. A similar meeting was held Thursday evening in the Machester neighborhood.

Last August, President Barack Obama issued an executive order regarding improving safety and security for chemical facilities. The lead agencies on a task force working on the order are the Department of Homeland Security, the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

But it was clear at the meetings held here this week that the vast reach of American chemical infrastructure, so well illustrated by the devastating fertilizer explosion in a small Texas town, makes for sharply differing perspectives on the meaning of safety and security.

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For homeland security officials, of paramount importance is who gets to know where explosive substances are harbored. But many residents who live near such facilities want to know how they can get access to just that information. For companies that make, store and use these substances, a question is how to the target unsafe businesses.

Ammonium nitrate is widely used in fertilizer and is what exploded inside a farm supply company in West.

Redundant regulations

Dyno Nobel is the largest maker of pellet-form ammonium nitrate in the country. Carl Byrd, security and regulatory compliance manager at Dyno Nobel, asked a DHS official to distinguish between the technical grade of ammonium nitrate widely used by the transportation and mining industries, and the products involved in disastrous explosions in West, in Texas City and in Oklahoma City.

He asked DHS not to impose rules drafted for the retail industry on the transportation industry.

"No over the counter retail market exists for the explosives industry," he said, pointing out that employees in the explosives industry are already vetted by federal agencies.

Hunting Titan, a company that makes and moves oilfield equipment including explosives, was also concerned about redundant layers of new regulation. Shelley Espinoza, compliance director at the company, raised an issue that sits at the heart of the meetings.

Hunting Titan, she said, supports sharing information with first responders, but not with groups known as "local emergency planning committees" (LEPCs).

"The security-sensitive nature of our business operations argues against broadening existing disclosures to these entities, which were established to disclose, not protect information," she said.

'Booms ... alarms'

For many businesses, exactly what they store and use on site is a confidential matter. But such words incense residents living near chemical production, storage and refining facilities, who attended in force at the listening sessions this week and earlier in Texas City.

Liana Lopez, who spoke at the Manchester meeting, said she is woken nearly every night by "booms and refinery alarms" and "no one tells us what's going on."

Several people in Manchester described repeatedly cracking foundations, frequent booming sounds, especially at night, and metallic dust on their cars.

Jaime Leon had to downsize his life when his health failed, and he required a kidney replacement. The only place he could afford to live was in the shadow of refineries and industrial plants. "We are not high taxpayers, so who cares if we die?" he asked.

The task force charged with Obama's order will translate feedback from community meetings into specific changes: making federal agencies share and harmonize information, strengthening worker safety and materials handling inside plants, and finding a way to leave communities less in the dark.

One area of focus is the 1986 law enacted by Congress and intended to be the national legislation on community safety: the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act.

This law creates local emergency planning committees across the country which were to be repositories of information about chemical hazards. In some counties they are. But in many others they are dormant, unknown or never formed.

'Regular meetings'

In Harris County, an official list shows more than a 17 such committees. Adrian Shelley, executive director of Air Alliance Houston, said his organizations recently tried to contact all them to get a sense of their activity.

"Do they hold regular meetings?" he said. "How do they reach out their neighbors?" The group was unable to find out, he said. Not many returned calls or emails.

"If we can't find the LEPCs, what chance does a citizen have? People have made simple, urgent requests about incidents at nearby plants, and they just don't get responses."